Sandy Hutchens Cancer Prevention

Pomegranates and Phytochemicals, Cancer Beware!

Eating a pomegranate everyday can help prevent breast cancer, new research reveals. American scientists are saying pomegranates contain chemical agents known as phytochemicals, which play an important role in the prevention of breast cancer.

Scientists at the City of Hope Cancer Research and Treatment Center in Duarte, California, have discovered that the fruit contains a large amount of the phytochemical called ellagitannins. The phytochemical has an inhibitory effect on the enzyme aromatase, which plays a pivotal role in making the hormone oestrogen, which in turn leads to most of the cases of breast cancer. Meanwhile, many patients who suffer from the breast cancer take medicines which are actually aromatase inhibitors.

The research which was published in the journal ‘Cancer Prevention Research’ highlights the fact that laboratory experiments that were carried out took into account around 10 compounds from the pomegranate and their effects were subsequently tested. Among the compounds which were taken into consideration, urolithin B was seen to be the most effective in preventing breast cancer.

However, researcher Shiuan Chen, who was intrinsically involved with the research, emphasized that the compounds did not turn out to be as effective as actual drugs due to which researchers have warned the patients against using the fruit as a replacement of the aromatase inhibitor medicines. At the same time, it has been implied that the results are not conclusive and further tests need to be carried out in order to confirm the findings. However, the findings are being considered to be significant as it might herald a new era in breast cancer treatment.

Read more: Pomegranates and Cancer.

Researchers could help elucidate how pregnancy provides protection against breast cancer and the findings may lead to a new way to prevent or treat the disease.

The University of Albany has connected the pregnancy protein alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) to breast cancer slowing down in rats exposed to pregnancy hormones such as estrogen, progesterone, or human chorionic gonadotropin.

These pregnancy hormones were shown by the authors to induce AFP during the term of pregnancy.

The hormones also appear to inhibit breast cancer growth in previous rat studies, although estrogen and progesterone fuel the growth of breast cancer in humans.

Herbert Jacobson, PhD, who has been studying AFP in rats for over twenty years, believes the protein is the cause of the pregnancy-related reduction in breast cancer risk.

“Twenty-five years ago I deduced that this must be the agent responsible for lowering breast cancer risk in women who have been pregnant,” he tells WebMD. “And the research we have done since then supports this hypothesis.”

Pregnancy, particularly before the 30 years old, lowers a woman’s lifetime risk of developing breast cancer. Also having more than one child is preventative.

Alpha-fetoprotein is produced by the fetus, and size of the protein during pregnancy can help to screen out possible birth defects.

Extremely high AFP levels portend the appearance of neural tube defects or an abdominal wall defect known as omphalocele, and extremely low levels suggest Down syndrome.

The protein is usually not detected in the blood of healthy men and women who are not yet pregnant. In these groups, elevated AFP levels suggest the presence of some cancers.

In their new study, in the December issue of Cancer Prevention Research, Jacobson and associates treated cancer-exposed rats that were not pregnant with estrogen, estrogen plus progesterone, or human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG).

As in previous studies, all of these treatments are associated with reduced levels of breast cancers in the high-risk rats.

Each of the hormone treatments were also connected with elevated AFP levels and AFP was found to slow down the growth of breast cancer cells in lab cultures.

“Hormones in pregnancy, such as estrogen, all induce AFP, which directly inhibits the growth of breast cancer,” Jacobson says in a news release.
Second Opinion

However, devil’s advocate and cancer specialist Powel Brown, MD, PhD, says the research does not show that this is true beyond a shadow of a doubt.

As is the case with these kinds of studies, says Sandy Hutchens Cancer Prevention, there will be those that promote the idea and there will be detractors. We await the results of further studies and even possibly some proof on this unique view into breast cancer prevention.

Pregnant and Facing Breast Cancer

Sandy Hutchens loves a fresh brewed cup of green tea.

Although scientists are reluctant to endorse green tea as a cancer prevention method, evidence continues to grow regarding the chemically complex drink’s potential benefits – including results of a new randomized, controlled trial by researchers at University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, which suggest it had some inhibiting effect in patients with a pre-malignant condition known as oral leukoplakia.

As reported in a report published online Nov 5 by Cancer Prevention Research(1), a team headed by Vassiliki Papadimitrakopoulo, MD, professor of medicine in M.D. Anderson’s Department of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology, tested green tea extract taken orally for three months by 41 patients diagnosed with oral leukoplakia and therefore at high risk of developing oral cancer.

The patients were divided into cohorts taking either placebo or one of three different doses of green tea extract 500 mg/m2, 750 mg/m2 or 1,000 mg/m2 [mg/m2 refers to milligrams per meter squared of body mass – calculated by a formula using height and weight to reflect a person’s relative size].

The researchers assessed clinical response in oral pre-malignant lesions and found:

• 58.8% of patients at the highest doses displayed clinical response,

• Compared with 18.2% among those taking placebo.

They also observed:

• A trend toward improved histology [cell & tissue integrity],

• And a trend towards improvement in a handful of biomarkers that may be important in predicting cancer development.

Patients were followed for 27.5 months and at the end of the study period, 15 developed oral cancer.

• Although there was no difference in oral cancer development overall between those who took green tea and those who did not,

• Patients who presented with mild to moderate dysplasia [abnormal cell growth] had a longer time to develop oral cancer if they took green tea extract.

Although encouraged by the results, Dr. Papadimitrakopoulo cautioned against any recommendations that green tea could definitely prevent cancer.

“This is a phase II study with a very limited number of patients who took what would be the equivalent of drinking eight to 10 cups of green tea every single day,” she said. “We cannot with certainty claim prevention benefits from a trial this size.”

Dong Shin, MD, (professor of hematology and medical oncology at Emory School of Medicine, and a Cancer Prevention Research editorial board member) agreed, but said this trial is certainly a step in the right direction. “A clinical trial with a natural compound is no easy task, and these researchers have accomplished that,” Dr. Shin stated in a companion article commenting on the trial(2). “The lack of toxicity is also important because often when you give supplements at higher doses than what would occur naturally, you induce nausea and vomiting. That did not happen in this trial.”

Neither researcher had a reason why patients concerned about cancer should not drink green tea, but they cautioned against relying on the beverage to definitively reduce their risk of cancer.

“The goal of this kind of research is to determine whether or not these supplements have long-term prevention effects,” said Dr. Papadimitrakopoulou. “More research – including studies in which individuals at high risk are exposed to these supplements for longer time period – is still needed to answer that sort of question.”